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<title>if you died i'd hope you'd haunt me (‘cause you know i'd miss you bad) by summerstozier</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27146435">if you died i'd hope you'd haunt me (‘cause you know i'd miss you bad)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstozier/pseuds/summerstozier'>summerstozier</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt, Hallucinations, Haunting, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Suicide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:56:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,787</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27146435</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstozier/pseuds/summerstozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Richie doesn’t know how to cope after his soon-to-be high school sweetheart Stan commits suicide. He can’t quite tell the difference between grief and horror. (title from Waterparks' song "I'll Always Be Around")</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bill Denbrough &amp; Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak &amp; Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>if you died i'd hope you'd haunt me (‘cause you know i'd miss you bad)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            It had been ten days since the funeral. Ten days since Richie had watched the love of his life be lowered into the ground. He hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time since Mrs. Uris told him what happened. He didn’t think it was possible to miss someone as much as he missed Stanley. They had been dating for almost two years, without a single fight more serious than what to get delivered for their Saturday movie night. Richie couldn’t believe Stan would do something like this to him. He knew that wasn’t fair, he knew he shouldn’t blame Stan but he couldn’t help it. It would be so easy to find someone else to blame, try to pinpoint who caused his boyfriend’s breaking point.</p><p>            The admissions employee at Yale who denied Stanley from joining their freshman class the following August. Their honors calculus teacher who unfairly gave him a <em>B</em> on their last quiz. Maybe even Wendy’s employee who forgot to include the ranch last time they went through the drive-thru, forcing Stan to throw out his chicken sandwich because “obviously I can’t eat my sandwich without ranch, <em>Richie</em>.” All of those things seemed inconsequential at the moment, and Richie knew he’d never be able to solve it. So, when he stopped blaming Stan, there would be no one left to blame but himself.</p><p>            Ten days without a solid night’s sleep was taking its toll on Richie. His eyes were sullen and dark, and he could barely bring himself to get out of bed once or twice a day to use the bathroom and refill his water bottle. It’s not like he was trying to slowly kill himself too (or at least, that’s what he would say when his parents attempted to coax him out of his musty room), he just felt too empty to do anything else. He slowly rolled over to face his alarm clock, squinting at the bright numbers reading <em>4:27 A.M.</em> Fuck. Richie knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at this point, and the sun would start to rise soon, so he resigned himself to another sleepless night and pushed the blanket off himself as he sat up in bed. He leaned off the bed and opened his nightstand drawer, pulling out the old cigarette pack he kept his joints in. He didn’t give a shit if his parents could still smell it when they woke up, so he didn’t bother getting out of bed to put a towel under the door or opening a window.</p><p>            He closed his eyes as he slowly took a drag off the lit joint, trying to hold the smoke in his lungs as long as he could. His throat started to feel tight, and he knew he would start coughing soon, but he still tried to hold out a few seconds longer. He opened his eyes again and blinked as he exhaled slowly. This was his last joint, he’d have to text Bill and see if he would be willing to get more for him.</p><p>            He hadn’t talked to anyone except his parents and Bill since the funeral. Bill was the only person who understood how Richie felt (though he knew he couldn’t beat losing a kid brother) and was willing to deliver other messages to the rest of the Losers. On the fifth day (or maybe it was the sixth? It was hard for Richie to keep track anymore) it had occurred to him that the other Losers must be just as heartbroken over Stan’s death as he was. After all, the Lucky Seven had been together since the sixth grade, and they had known Bill and Eddie since elementary school. Maybe that was part of it – Richie knew he wouldn’t be able to look Eddie in the eyes without seeing Stan.</p><p>            Richie liked listening to music when he was high, it was an easy way to escape. He could just lay back and close his eyes as he imagined intricate plotlines for the different songs and completely blocked out the world around him. He turned up the volume as loud as he could stand it, and tried to relax as he laid back and shifted to get more comfortable. Guitars filled his head alongside the smoke, and he lost track of how many songs played as he laid in the dark room. His high was peaking, and he hoped he would be asleep soon.</p><p>            His eyes snapped open as he felt what he would have <em>sworn</em> was his bed shifting beside his legs. The bedroom door was still closed, and he couldn’t see anyone else in the moonlit room. He decided to ignore it but still turned his music down a few notches, assuming he was probably just tripping harder than he expected. Just as he started to close his eyes again, he heard a whisper.</p><p>            “Richie. Richie.”</p><p>            He shot back up into a sitting position again, and held his breath as he stared toward the foot of the bed. If he squinted, he could’ve sworn Stanley was there in his room, sitting cross-legged on his blanket just like he used to when they would study together in the afternoons. Richie didn’t want to squint. He didn’t want to see the figure in any more detail than he already was. As tempting as it was to give in to the hallucination, Richie wasn’t <em>crazy</em>. Well, he guessed that was still on the table, but he certainly didn’t think he was crazy enough to hallucinate his dead boyfriend sitting with him in bed. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, but still shifted back to sit closer to the wall and further from <em>whatever</em> he was seeing.</p><p>            “Richie, come on, stop fucking around. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to do this.”</p><p>            Okay, so the hallucination definitely sounded like Stan too. <em>Fine</em>, Richie surrendered, <em>let’s talk to it</em>.</p><p>            “Are you a ghost?” he asked, barely above a whisper.</p><p>            “I guess? I don’t really get it either, I just needed to see you. I’m sorry, Richie, I’m so sorry I left you. None of this is your fault, and I need you to stop blaming yourself for what happened to me.”</p><p>            “Right, you just want me to <em>move past</em> the fact that I should have been there for you!” Richie couldn’t stop his voice from growing slightly, “I should have realized something was wrong, I should have done <em>something</em>.”</p><p>            “You didn’t know because I didn’t want you to know. It was my fight, and I didn’t want you to worry about me. And you don’t have to worry about me now. I’m not hurting anymore, Richie. I’m <em>okay</em>.”</p><p>            Richie’s eyes started to well up, and he rubbed his palms against them in an attempt to stop any tears from falling.</p><p>            “Why? Why wasn’t I enough for you, Stan? Why wasn’t I enough to keep you here?”</p><p>            “It had nothing to do with you, I promise. I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I love you, Rich, I’ll always love you. It’ll get easier, okay? I want you to try to move on, remember the happy memories we had instead of missing me. I’ll always be around if you do that, it’ll just be like I moved away or something.”</p><p>            “But you didn’t just move away! You’re gone forever, I’m never gonna see you again. I don’t want to be here without you Stanley, I was ready to spend forever with you. I loved you so much, and you left. You <em>left</em>, and I’m so <em>mad at you</em>. It’s eating me up inside, repeating all the last conversations we had and wondering if you’d still be here if I had said something else, <em>anything</em> else. How could I have saved you?”</p><p>            “You couldn’t have saved me. I don’t think anyone could have. I made this decision entirely on my own and it had nothing to do with what you did or didn’t do, you have to believe that. You have to stop killing yourself, Richie. The Losers miss you so much, and they’re feeling the same way you are right now. I know if our positions were switched, you would never let me mope around like this, you’d want me to move on and try to be happy again.”</p><p>            “What if I can’t? What if I can never be happy without you?”</p><p>            “You <em>can</em>. Call Bill, and not just for weed this time. Get out of the house, and for God’s sake <em>please </em>take a shower, you smell terrible.”</p><p>            Richie smiled softly as he started to cry. Stan always nagged him for not showering as often as he found appropriate, and <em>it doesn’t count unless you use soap, Richie!</em>  He had really missed this, Stan bickering at him for his personal hygiene, or for smoking too much. Stan was one of the only people who saw Richie’s true potential, and knew he was worth a lot more than he gave himself credit for. He had helped Richie commit to studying, actually trying in class so his grades were good enough for Stan to help him apply to some of the same colleges so they could go somewhere together in the fall.</p><p>            He supposed it didn’t matter now what college he went to, if he was even going at all. Without Stan, what was the point? He didn’t have a future anymore to work toward; he was perfectly content to rot in his parents’ house until they got sick of him too. He felt the ghost of a hand on his thigh through the blanket.</p><p>            “I know that look, you have to stop spiraling. You don’t have to have everything planned out now, it’s okay to need a break. Let yourself heal. But I don’t want you to just give up, okay? You deserve to have a life even if I’m gone, Richie. I love you.”</p><p>            “I love you, Stan. I love you, I love you, I love you.”</p><p> </p><p>            Richie blindly reached for the water bottle on his nightstand, taking large gulps before he opened his eyes, blinking at the morning sunlight. He didn’t remember falling asleep, he just remembered Stan. Was any of that real? He wished he hadn’t smoked last night, he’d never know if that was just the worst trip of his life or if something utterly <em>impossible</em> had happened. Richie quickly got out of bed and grabbed a sticky note and Sharpie off his desk. He pulled the cap off with his teeth and quickly scrawled a few words out before pulling the note off the stack and sticking it onto the wall by his desk lamp.</p><p>
  <em>            I’ll always be around.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've been hyperfixating on both It and Waterparks lately so I thought it might be fun to write a kind of spooky little one-shot combining the two! Also I wrote this in one sitting in the middle of the night and didn't beta it before uploading, so let me know if there are any typos! Happy Halloween, girls and gays.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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